Текст книги "I Love Him, I Love Him Not "

Автор книги: Ella Martin

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I Love Him, I Love Him Not

by Ella Martin

Published by Clean Reads

www.cleanreads.com

This is a work of fiction. Names, places, characters, and events are fictitious in every regard. Any similarities to actual events and persons, living or dead, are purely coincidental. Any trademarks, service marks, product names, or named features are assumed to be the property of their respective owners, and are used only for reference. There is no implied endorsement if any of these terms are used. Except for review purposes, the reproduction of this book in whole or part, electronically or mechanically, constitutes a copyright violation.

I LOVE HIM, I LOVE HIM NOT

Copyright © 2015 E.M. Caines

ISBN 978-1-62135-451-2

Cover Art Designed by AM DESIGN STUDIO

To Quincie, for reasons

Chapter One

I heard the yelling before I reached the landing at the top of the stairs. The apartment was soundproof, and noise rarely escaped from it, so this must have been some argument.

“We’re in high school,” someone said.

“Yeah, and we sound like it.” That came from Zack, the lead singer of Ephemera and one of the most egotistical prats I’d ever met. And as my dad was a Class A dirtbag, that was saying something.

“We’re trying, okay?” Leave it to Jake to try reasoning with him. He was Ephemera’s drummer, an uber-talented musician in his own right, and the reason the band had such a cool rehearsal space. When his parents got him an acoustic drum kit, they put up soundproofing panels and extra insulation in the studio apartment above their garage to lessen the noise while he practiced.

It only served to muffle the conversation in the room, though. The guys were loud enough for me to hear almost everything, but I still put my ear to the door to listen more closely. I knew this wasn’t a new argument. Zack had been picking fights with everyone over most of winter break, and Jake had been the only one able to placate him. If I thought it was exhausting to watch, I could only guess how Jake felt.

“You mean you’re trying,” Zack said. “These guys don’t take it seriously.”

“This used to be fun,” said a sullen voice that sounded like it belonged to Keith, Ephemera’s bassist.

“Fun?” Zack bellowed. “Do you think John Lennon and Paul McCartney were just having fun?”

“Uh, yeah.” That was Keith again.

“We’re not the Beatles. We’re never going to be.” Jake sounded resigned when he spoke. I wondered how long this argument had been going on.

“Not with that kind of attitude, we won’t.” Zack snorted. “It’s like you guys don’t even want to try.”

“We are trying,” Jake repeated.

“Forget it, Jake,” said Keith. “Apparently, Zack thinks he’d be better off on his own without his house band.”

Zack swore and hurled some choice insults at him. I moved to the third step from the top and flattened myself against the wall. If Zack and Keith were at it again, one of them would be flying out the door in a matter of seconds.

Five. Four. Three. Two.

The door swung open with such force, it bounced off the wall. Zack stormed out, his gig bag strapped to his back, and he raced down the steps without looking back.

I waited a few seconds, half-expecting Keith or Jake to chase after him. When no one else emerged, I climbed the last few stairs and peered into the room. “Is it safe now?”

Keith turned to me, his face grim. Aside from Jake, Keith Truman was my favorite of all the guys in the band. He was an inch or two shorter than Jake’s six-foot-even height and had light brown, almost blond hair that was longer in front than in the back and on the sides. The easygoing grin he usually sported made it impossible to stay annoyed with him for long. I couldn’t remember if I’d ever seen him frowning like he was at that moment, but Zack was his best friend. This argument probably hurt him more than it affected anyone else.

“You missed all the fun, T,” Keith said. “A few seconds earlier and you could’ve witnessed our band implode.”

“I could hear you guys from outside.”

“Yeah, I’m not surprised.” He ran his fingers through his hair and paused with his hand on the back of his neck. “I should probably go talk to him before he leaves and things get really bad.” He passed me and left the room, pulling the door shut behind him.

Jake twirled a drumstick between his fingers for a few seconds before he shoved it into his back pocket and flashed me a sheepish smile. “Hey.” He shook his head to flip his hair out of his eyes. I returned his smile.

Jake DeSantos had amazing hair. It was longish and wavy and just this crazy, disheveled mop-top of a mess that he was never able to get under control. It kept falling into his eyes, which was a constant source of irritation for his mom. It was too long according to the Westgate Prep Appearance Guidelines, too, but he was so paranoid about his ears sticking out that he’d said he’d rather risk serving detention every day than cut it. Besides his trademark hair, he had these intense dark eyes and a lopsided smile that revealed a slight overbite and a chipped front tooth that had been there for as long as I could remember. Some girls at school thought he was cute, and I guess he was, in an abstract sort of way. I just saw him as Jake.

“That sounded intense.”

He rolled his eyes and sighed. “You have no idea.”

I set my backpack onto the tiny counter in the kitchenette and stepped into a hug. I buried my head into his shoulder as he squeezed me tight. Jake gave the best hugs. It was among the reasons he was one of my best friends.

“I’m glad you’re here,” he said into my hair. “But I thought you and Bianca were doing stuff today.”

“Change of plans.” I pulled away. “She texted me earlier and said Tim was coming over, and I think Ally’s at her brother’s garage today or something.” I sat down on the love seat in the corner and kicked off my sneakers before I pulled up my knees and covered them with my oversized sweatshirt. I tried not to seem miffed about my best friend canceling our plans on the last day of winter break so she could hang out with her boyfriend, Tim, especially because it would’ve been totally heartless to pitch a fit since he was heading to Stanford in the fall. But it meant I had an afternoon with nothing to do, and I hated being alone.

I watched Jake reposition a couple of fallen music stands and scoop up some guitar picks from the floor. He righted an overturned bowl on the end table before dropping the picks into it.

“What was that all about?” I asked, referring to the argument I’d overheard.

He pushed a lock of dark hair out of his eyes and shrugged. “Just Zack,” he said. “Same old.”

I nodded. Zack Montgomery was super talented and could coax some amazing sounds from his guitar, and he knew it. As such, he also had a serious case of what Keith called LGS, or Lead Guitarist Syndrome. Keith and Jake were usually able to keep him in line, but this was the worst argument I’d seen in months.

“Zero to ten, how bad is it this time?” I said, patting the seat beside me.

“Bad. Like, twelve bad.” He pulled his drumsticks out from his back pocket before he sat down and stretched out his legs. “Remember that Battle of the Bands a couple of months ago?” I nodded, and he added, “Malcom Davies signed Frigid Kittens to his label.”

“The band that won?”

“Yeah.”

I frowned. After Ephemera lost that night, Jake had been sullen for days, but Zack’s reaction had been the worst, blaming his bandmates for their loss. News of the winners signing a record deal must have sent him over the edge.

“Ouch,” I said. There wasn’t anything else to say.

He fiddled with his drumsticks, one in each hand. I watched as they moved across his fingertips in seamless cycles. “I think the press release is supposed to go out tomorrow, but yeah.”

“Wait. How’d you hear about it already?”

A melodic, singsong voice said, “Me, of course.”

I looked up to find a tall, wispy girl standing in the doorway with a coffin-shaped hard case in her hand.

Jake jumped to his feet and took the guitar case as he ushered her in. I raised my hand in greeting. “Hi, Clover.”

“Hey, Talia. I didn’t think you’d be here.” She glanced at Jake and arched a perfectly shaped eyebrow at him.

I hugged my knees. “Bianca kind of flaked on me.”

“Let me guess,” Clover said as she flipped up the latches of her case. “To hang with her boyfriend?” She pulled out a blue guitar and began tuning it. “Lame.”

A part of me felt like I needed to defend my best friend, but as Clover voiced my own sentiments, I kept my expression neutral and didn’t say anything.

I’d met her at the start of winter break and had hung out with her a lot over the last couple of weeks, but I still wasn’t sure how I felt about Clover Davies. On paper, it was easy to hate her. Her dad was Malcolm Davies, three-time Grammy Award winner and founder of Damaged Records. Her mom was a retired supermodel. She didn’t go to Westgate but was homeschooled by half a dozen tutors instead. I thought her eyes were kind of wide set and her neck was a little long, but there was something about her that made people turn and stare. And she always looked like designers came to her house and picked out clothes for her to wear. That day, she was dressed in what my friend Ally would’ve called “Boho chic”: a floral dress, long cardigan, and suede granny boots over cream-colored tights. Dark corkscrew curls were in an artfully messy updo with wisps framing her sweetheart-shaped faced, drawing attention to her large gray eyes. By comparison, my sweatshirt and jeans made me look like a mess.

But appearances and pedigree aside, I kind of liked Clover, too. She exuded an enviable confidence and said the kinds of things I wished I had the courage to say. Plus we shared the same level of disdain for Zack, albeit for different reasons. I didn’t like him because he was the ultimate poster child for Guys I Avoided at All Costs. She didn’t like him because all he cared about was getting close to her dad.

“Keith and Zack are having an epic screamfest down there,” she said as she finished tuning her guitar. “Do I even need to ask?” Jake shook his head, and she sighed. “Zack needs to get used to rejection. It’s part of the business.” Then with a nod in my direction she said, “Who’s at Northwestern?”

“Huh?” I looked down at my sweatshirt and tugged at it. “Oh, my cousin, Pete.”

“He’s the only member of her family she actually likes,” Jake said with a grin.

Clover nodded. “I’m digging the magenta. Looks good against the black.”

“Thanks.” My hand flew to my hair, and I twirled the dyed streak. I had a weird birthmark on my scalp that turned a patch of hair white. After being called “skunk girl” all through middle school, my mom finally let me dye it the summer before freshman year. I liked experimenting with different colors.

“Too bad you can’t keep it, though,” she said. “I heard your school frowns upon colorful self-expression.”

Jake smiled. “Oh, not Talia. She’s special.”

I rolled my eyes. “My mom worked it out with the administration,” I said. It didn’t hurt that my grandfather was on the school’s board of directors, either, but people didn’t really need to know that.

The door swung open, and Keith strode into the room. He went straight to the refrigerator and popped the tab on a can of soda before he said, “Okay. We’re done.”

“‘Done’ like you’re finished talking?” I said. “Or ‘done’ like done?”

“Just done. Well, for now, anyway.” He lifted his chin toward Clover. “Still feel like jamming? We’re short a guitarist.”

She played a few chords in succession before she bobbed her head. “Sure. You can’t let little setbacks ruin a rehearsal. Sometimes you’ve got to play through it.”

“You make it sound like a football injury,” Keith said with a sardonic smirk.

“Music’s a team sport,” she replied as she put her guitar strap over her head. “Right, Jake?”

As Jake sat on the drum throne behind his set and grinned at her, a weird feeling I couldn’t place settled in my stomach. I looked at each of them and frowned.

Jake and Clover spent a lot of time together and had a lot in common, so I should’ve expected inside jokes between them, too.

So why did I suddenly want to smack her?

Chapter Two

I pulled my car into my assigned space in the school lot as the first bell rang the next morning. I’d had a restless night full of crazy dreams, and I didn’t even hear my phone ding with my daily wake-up text from Jake. If my mom hadn’t stood over my bed screaming at me, I probably wouldn’t have made it to school before lunch.

At least my school uniform made it easy to decide what to wear. Not that I ever would’ve admitted that aloud.

I hated where the sophomore section of the parking lot was. Westgate Prep was on a well-manicured, sprawling campus that took up about fourteen acres near the Santa Monica Mountains, and while it was a pretty school, it also took forever to walk from one end to the other. And, of course, the sophomore lot was at the bottom of the hill and about as far away from the main building – and my homeroom class – as it could’ve possibly been. I had five minutes to trek uphill through the rest of the parking lot to get there.

The final bell rang as I turned into the breezeway. People around me ducked into their rooms to avoid being tardy, and I silently cursed. I knew I was already late, but a trip to the front office for a tardy slip would’ve taken at least another five minutes, while I was just a few seconds from the door.

It probably wasn’t the best way to start the first week back from winter break, but I took a chance and opened the door to homeroom, striding into class with my head held high. Mr. Jorgensen, one of the school deans and my European history teacher, paused from asking everyone to settle down, and I felt his eyes on me as I walked to my seat at the back of the class.

“How lovely of you to join us, Miss Nicoletti,” he said, his voice laced with sarcasm.

“Glad to be here, sir.” I risked looking at him with a confident smile to hide my apprehension.

Jorgensen opened and closed his mouth a few times like a freshly caught mackerel. I sat straight in my seat and gave him my full attention, careful not to let my smile waver. He stared at me before he resumed speaking to the class.

From the seat in front of me, Bianca flipped her long dark hair over her shoulder and turned. “One of these days,” she whispered, her brown eyes wide with concern, “he’s going to explode. Or have a heart attack. Maybe even both.”

I shook my head. “He’s harmless.”

“If it was anyone else,” she said, “he would’ve sent them up to the office. I can’t believe how much you get away with.”

“I was, what? Forty seconds late?” I settled into my seat. “Besides, it’s totally bogus. I was in the building at final bell.”

She let out a sigh and faced forward. I bit my lip to keep from laughing. Bianca Sullivan may have been my best friend, but she preferred to fly under the radar. It wasn’t like she’d never been known to break any rules or anything, but she wasn’t one to test boundaries. She liked playing it safe.

Mr. Jorgensen never reprimanded me for my behavior, a fact that didn’t go unnoticed by my classmates. Bianca and Ally said he was scared of me, but the reality was he and the rest of the administration were probably afraid of my mom, though it could’ve been my grandfather’s money and position of power influencing their leniency, too. I didn’t only get to sport a streak of whatever color I wanted in my hair, but I’d also managed to get away with wearing whatever shoes and jewelry I wanted, regardless of the appearance guidelines. I’d even been known to hike up my green-and-blue plaid skirt an inch or two just to see if anyone would say anything, but no one ever did. So although Jorgensen probably would’ve kicked out anyone else for waltzing in without a tardy slip a few seconds after the bell, it didn’t surprise me that he barely acknowledged my ever-so-slightly late arrival.

The lights dimmed and the flat screen at the front of the room flickered to life with an image of Mrs. Goldberg, the Student Council moderator, reading the morning announcements.

“I thought you were coming over yesterday,” Bianca whispered over her shoulder.

“Yeah, but you texted and said Tim was on his way.”

“To hang out with my brother. I—” She glanced forward for a second and shook her head. “Later.”

I nodded. A slight vibration tickled my leg, so I reached into my skirt pocket and grabbed my phone.

Where were U? the text from Ally read.

I glanced up at her, but her attention was focused on Mrs. Goldberg babbling something about next month’s Sweetheart’s Dance.

Overslept, I tapped onto the screen. I hit Send the same time Mr. Jorgensen cleared his throat and called my name.

“Miss Nicoletti, while you clearly have no regard for punctuality or the school dress code, I do ask that you at least abide by the classroom rules and put your phone away.”

I blinked. This was the first time he had publicly called me out for any infraction. And of all the rules I’d already broken that morning, using my phone seemed really trivial. The entire class was silent, as if they were waiting to see what I would do next.

If I hadn’t been taken by surprise, I might have retorted by telling him where he could shove the classroom rules, but as that would’ve landed me a well-earned trip to the principal’s office, it was probably best I kept my composure. I dropped my phone into my backpack. “Yes, sir.”

Mr. Jorgensen nodded once before he turned back to watch the announcements. Most of the class followed suit, and, aside from a few furtive glances from a couple of girls in the front, the incident seemed forgotten.

Ally shifted in her seat to look back at me. “Sorry,” she mouthed.

I tilted my head to acknowledge her apology, but inside, I was seething.

“What do you think is up with Jorgensen today?” Ally said after homeroom as we walked to our English class. “He was totally harsh.”

“Maybe he switched to decaf over break.” I raised a shoulder in a half-shrug. “Who knows?”

“Did you seriously oversleep?” she asked, her green eyes narrowed with suspicion. “Did Jake not text you?”

“No, he did, but I must’ve slept through it.”

“Maybe you learned to text him back in your sleep.”

I grinned. “Maybe. Though that could be bad.” Jake and I both got cell phones in the fifth grade, and for the longest time we were the only people we knew with phones. It started as a joke, but since middle school, Jake had texted me every morning to wake me up and didn’t stop until I’d responded.

“So Bianca said you flaked on her yesterday,” she said as we narrowly avoided crashing into a group of freshmen boys chasing each other down the hall.

“Uh, no,” I said, annoyed. “She told me Tim was coming over, and it sounded like they’d be hanging out. So I went to Jake’s.” I hitched up my backpack to keep it from sliding off my shoulder. “Do you know Clover Davies?”

It was a silly question, and I knew it. Ally Katz knew just about everyone in Playa del Lago, whether or not they went to Westgate Prep. She was the ultimate socialite: polished, connected, and well informed. Her blog was the gossip hub and standard reading for the entire school, and she almost always knew about pop quizzes before anyone else did. Very few things happened at Westgate without her knowledge.

“Of course,” she said in a way that made me feel even more ridiculous for asking. “But only of her. I’ve met her dad. He’s got this gorgeous ’63 Corvette Stingray coupe with the split rear window.” She sighed wistfully. “It’s amazing.”

I suppressed a laugh. That was the other thing about Ally. Her oldest brother owned a local garage that specialized in classic cars, so she knew what everyone drove, especially if the cars cost some serious coin. And since she grew up building hot rods with her dad and brothers, she was more knowledgeable about cars than most people. Period.

“Plus, she’s practically rock royalty. I mean, her dad knows everyone.” Ally twirled a golden spiral around her finger and released it, letting the lock of hair fall into a springy coil.

“Yeah, I know,” I said as we approached our class. “I saw her a lot over winter break. I guess she and Jake are pretty tight.”

“Was she at his house yesterday?”

I nodded and opened the door. “She seems okay.”

“But?”

“I don’t know.” I couldn’t shake the weird feeling in my gut from the previous day, but I knew better than to confide any of that to Ally.

We settled in our seats, and she leaned over. “Do you want me to find out what’s going on?”

“With what?”

She rolled her eyes. “With Jake and Clover. Duh.”

I was incredulous. “What? No. He’d—” I stopped myself. Jake would what? Tell me if he had a girlfriend? I wasn’t so sure. More to the point, I wasn’t sure I’d care if he did. Or why I should. “Just ‘no,’” I said. “It’s not a big deal.”

“Are you jealous?” she said with a broad grin.

“Get over yourself.”

“Hmm.” She sat back in her chair with a smug smile on her lips.

“Whatevs,” I said with a snort. “I don’t know why I talk to you about anything.”

“Because that’s what friends do.”

I sent up a silent prayer for something more exciting to happen that day, anything Ally would consider bloggable material. The last thing I wanted was some ridiculous rumor to start flying around about a triangle involving Jake, Clover, and me.